Thursday December 8, 2005
	They loan strollers out equipped with DVD players.
	"Isn't that something, baby?" says the woman walking alongside me.  "The mall loans strollers out with DVD players built into them." I say: "That's lovely." Modern American chicks pretty much insist that American men use words like cute and lovely. She says: "It's precious." I say: "It's really cute." "When I have a child I'm gonna name it Gibson," she says then pushing her lips onto mine. When she pulls away I say: "Is that a boy or a girl?" "That's the beauty of it honey, Gibson can be a boy or a girl," she says. I say: "That's really something, honey." Secretly and to myself I'm thinking: What the hell am I doing here?  C'mon Norm.  C'mon.  It isn't something.  It isn't something at all.  Since I've been here (at the mall) I've walked passed a sea of American women each one looking like the last and all looking like something I've already seen a thousand times before in a f-cking television commercial.  Perfumed, chocolate flavored mood boosting lip balm wearing, calcium overdosed, determined not to look like their mother American women pushing well dressed idiotic Gibson's around in DVD equipped strollers. C'mon man.  C'mon.           She says: "I wonder what DVD's are available for the stroller?" "Probably things like Scooby-Doo and Barney," I say, then smiling. "Uh huh," she says. I've ordered two tall Caramel Macchiatos at the Starbucks in the mall and while I'm waiting for my order I'm watching the news coming from the complimentary TV and some full lipped journalist using standard dialect is talking about an air marshal that killed a guy because he was openly bipolar and not pretending (to appear sane) like the rest of the wooden passengers and she's apologizing because only a few minutes earlier she personally deduced that because the plane was from Colombia, "The shooting was probably drug related." C'mon man. C'mon. "Enjoy," I say then giving my date the Caramel Macchiato.  She says: "It smells good." While we're drinking I'm thinking about the whacked whore I once dated and how she too was bipolar and how she once slapped me with a phony restraining order (later dismissed).  "These are really good," I say.    "They're addictive," she says. I say: "There's another one of those strollers with the on-board DVD player." She's looking at the kid sitting in the mall stroller and she's studying the screen of the DVD player and when she's done looking she turns to me and says: "Her little boy is watching Monsters, Inc." "Really cute," I say. "He's so quiet," says my date to the woman with the kid sitting in the DVD equipped stroller. "The DVD player is a lifesaver," says the mother of the kid then directing her attention back to the person she was talking to on her cell phone. To myself I'm thinking: Yeah, prop him up in front of a television shit for brains. "Love you, Norm," says my date then stretching her lips into a kind of crooked half smile. "I appreciate that," I say.  PREVIOUS   HOME   NEXT